help maximise productivity for
traders who could be experiencing
information overload. Other tools
in high-demand include real-time
in-trade charts that can plot the
progress of an order across its execution lifecycle and more powerful
visualisation packages such as heat
maps and bubble charts that enable
traders to act on a large amount of
information at a glance.

TT: As one of the early pioneers
of EMS in the listed space, do you
think there is now a genuine shift
towards relying on electronic trading for fixed income as well?

CH: There is now a lot of serious
discussion around this and growing
demand for fixed income EMSs.

The recent proliferation of fixedincome trading venues that has ledto fragmentation is likely to be fol-lowed by some consolidation, butthe pre- and post-trade transpar-ency rules mean that we will seemore meaningful volumes forcedonto the screen.

Because of this, any serious fixed
income buy-side firm will need
liquidity aggregation and access
to multiple execution venues,
along with the tools to achieve
best execution. As we were the
first non-venue EMS to offer fixed
income trading on our platform, we
have been able to leverage a first
mover advantage in discussions
with both venues and liquidity providers in the fixed income space.

While the majority of fixed
income still may not be executed
on screens in the near future,

there is a major drive to get morepre-trade data on there and withmore liquidity becoming accessi-ble among the 100+ venues thatnow exist, the buy-side will needan EMS to help them solve thefragmentation issue and aggregatethis liquidity.

TT: If a buy-side firm is currently
gearing up for change and still selecting its partners, can it really be
ready in time for MiFID II in January
2018?

CH: Yes, we don’t expect MiFID
II to all arrive at once with all the
regulatory changes arriving on
day one. It is likely there will be a
bedding-in period to enable firms
to get used to the requirements,
though we expect regulators will
be less lenient than in the past.
New ways of onboarding clients
and the SaaS (
Software-as-a-Ser-vice model) also mean it is far less
painful and time consuming than
in the past, so buy-side firms currently in EMS selection mode still
do have time to make the change.